Cinderella Shoes

Based on the shirt I am wearing you might think I am in New London, New Hampshire, USA. You might also think I need a haircut, but I just got one. Thanks Luke! Love it.

Behind me is the Cinderella Shoe Company. It hasn't always been that, but it's been named this for a long while. And here's the thing. It doesn't make shoes for only cinder girls and princesses. Not even only for the daughters of Lords and Dukes and Ladies and Duchesses. They also make shoes for tailors, sailors, and candle stick makers. They are quite egalitarian.

Sure, they started making very high end shoes for Cinderella in a small shop, and realized they could make more money offering shoes to other rich persons. There were a large number of scummy, scanky princes and kings who had way too much money and way too many “lady friends” they liked to spend money on. Tax payers money, I should add. But I digress.

Using the money from that growing business they began to offer quality footwear to footmen and women, to stable boys and girls, to potters and weavers, still made with top quality materials and using the best workpersonship available. Those rich folks help subsidize the other footwear for the ‘common folk.’ I use quotes because we are the common folk. We are the people of the masses. They charged high prices for the fancy shoes the well heeled like, and for those who were not as well off, they provided sturdy, practical shoes.

Their business grew from a size 2 to a size 14 and moved into the building you see here which used to build carriages.

But who started this company? It was an ex-soldier, drummer lad called Willis. He had met a wonderful elder woman on returning (by foot) from war, who gave him a cloak of invisibility in return for some food. She told him there was work to be had if he visited Cinderella and began making regular fancy shoes, as she was done with glass slippers. They were called slippers for a reason. They simply had no grip. Once established, he should then go to the castle where the twelve princesses wore out their shoes every night.

The wise elder told him not to drink the tea the sisters offered him and he would be rich. So, off he apprenticed with Cinderella & Co. and then, as a journeyman, went to see the princesses. He couldn't figure out why he would be rich until he heard the proclamation (the Twitter of its day) that whomever could find out why the king's daughters were going through So Many Shoes (a pair a night each!) they could marry one of the princesses.

Now when he met them he knew immediately that none of the princesses would want to marry him - a gnarly old soldier lad, and he really didn't want to marry any of them. He didn't think that they would have much in common. Even the eldest was sort of young for him and he simply wasn't a creepy guy. So he didn't drink the tea, which was where everyone else failed, and following the ladies, the sisters through a hidden door, found, using his invisibility cloak, that they danced the night away, ruining a pair of shoes each evening. I believe they were coached by Leo Sayer. He certainly wrote a song about them.

The soldier-cobbler gathered some items from the balls they attended over several nights to use as evidence. He had heard of some kings totally reneging on deals, but those are stories for another day. Although the princesses said the dancing was all lies, he showed the king and his advisors the door and the evidence, and really the ladies didn't have a leg to stand on, or dance with, I suppose.

The king offered his daughters up, as kings did in those days, and was thrilled the soldier-cobbler only wanted five gold rings and a contract to make shoes for the twelve dancers and any other dancers who might want appropriate footwear. And with twelve sisters dancing, and many lords leaping, soon he had clients from them to milking maids, drummers, and pipers. Some asked for goose, partridge, dove, and swan feathers on their shoes, and occasionally he used pear wood for the soles of his shoes. For him it felt like Christmas had come early.

Anyway, Cinderella Shoes is still in business today, as you can see, and run by Willis's great, great, great grandson. The most recent generation went into adding a line of shoes to help those with plain facetiousness, or sharp pain in your heels. This is their Well-Heeled range. The company remains a bastion of quality footwear and, as you can see in the photo above, the rudimentary illustration of Cinderella’s carriage is still seen on the wooden fence. Apparently they repaint it every year.

Be safe out there!

Peace,

Simon